More car audio input hacking

[Dave] pulled the head unit out of his dashboard to add an iPod input. He took a much more invasive route than the other hack we saw a few days ago. He actually patched into the audio lines going from the Dolby reader head chip to the amplifier.

The first step was to trick the deck into thinking it had a cassette inserted. He scoped an enable pin on one of the chips to discover the timing and emulated that signal using a PIC microprocessor. From there he popped off the chip that reads the tape data, patching directly into the audio out traces. This presented some noise issues when charging the iPod but [Dave] fixed that with some decoupling capacitors.

Holy shit, I can’t believe how much those Lindstrom cutters cost! When I was with TI, they supplied me with an awesome set of cutters similar to this, but with a black tapered steel flush-cut head, hard green squarish(in cross-section) handles and a golden(if I recall correctly) silk screened logo, of which manufacturer I don’t remember, but wish I did!

Hmm… Searching a little, the molded grips looked similar to the Velleman VT100 cutters(but with a flat, not glossy, finish). Unlike the Velleman cutters, though, the ones I had were not the stamped-steel type, but the milled-steel type, with a head similar to the head on the Lindstrom. I can’t believe that Google is failing me here… :)

A messy workbench is a loved workbench.
-and this one isn’t even that messy. ;)
(not to imply that it isn’t loved)

I’m a Snap-On man personally, but any fine quality tool is worth having when you work with them and take your work seriously, especially if you spent any time at all getting along with um, shall we say…LESS than fine quality tools.

The hack? It’s awesome.
I’d do the same thing if I still had a cassette player.

Hey, I just remembered seeing this and feeling left out. I know this is old to be posting on, but maybe this will help someone else out :). I have a 2004 Subaru, and as some of you may know Subaru wasn’t too keen on the idea of AUX jacks until around 2007. I found a way to cut into the FM traces and have a fully functioning head unit with an AUX jack and no stupid “noiseless Blank cd” playing.
Heres a linkhttp://electronicsjunk.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=35&Itemid=60